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Tuesday, June 26, 2012

In The Story of the Fixer Upper - Part One, I explained how we put an offer on a house once the sellers significantly reduced their asking price. A lower cost meant that we would be able to finance the major renovations it desperately needed.

To our disappointment, we lost the house because the owners accepted the conditional offer that had already been presented by another buyer.

Alex and I were pretty bummed. We kept looking for houses in our little town but the ones that popped up on MLS weren't in the best locations. After a few weeks, Alex decided to place an ad on Kijiiji saying that he was looking to buy a house in our town, in the $____ to $____ price range. He got a response right away from a man who mentioned that he was renovating a property and would be looking to sell in a few months.

Alex asked the address of the property. Whaddayaknow it was The Fixer Upper. The other buyers bought it to flip it.

{Didn't they get my memo that I'm supposed to be the one flipping houses in this town!?!?!}

The man asked if we wanted to come and check out what they had done to the house so far. Of course we said yes....... I should've changed my name a long time ago to Snoopy McSnooperson.

We were quite surprised by some of the changes that the Flippers (that's what we'll call them for the rest of this story) had made already. They moved the basement stairs to a different location, turned one of the upstairs bedrooms into a bathroom, and divided up the back mudroom / laundry room into a bathroom, bedroom, and hall closet. As we got the full house tour, we chatted about how we were looking to purchase a house for Alex's parents to live in but that we had a set budget.

The Flippers mentioned the asking price that they would be selling the house for afterwards. It was WAY more than our budget. Just when we thought all was lost (dramatic much?) they mentioned that they would consider selling the house to us mid-way through the renovation.

Translation: we would pay less but have to finish some of the work ourselves. So, we went for it. To make a long story short, we made a list of renovations that we wanted to be completed by the closing date, as well as a list of renovations that we would be responsible for finishing.

Here are some photos of the progress the Flippers had made by the time we took possession of the house last week. (I'll go into more detail about the changes that were made in a future post.)

Obviously Alex, his parents, and I still have tonnes of work to do on both the interior and exterior of the house. However, the Flippers were able to make quite a bit of progress on the interior. The major improvements being:

- gutting the basement

- removing a tonne of garbage

- all new electrical

- all new windows

- new plumbing to two new bathroom locations

- new drywall and refaced plaster

- new kitchen cabinetry & countertops

- refinished old doors

- refinished floors

- refinished stairs

- addition of main floor bedroom

- addition of laundry to second story

While some of the layout and finishing decisions were not what I would have personally chosen (remember me, the ultimate picky one?) we are still grateful for the opportunity to purchase the house mid-flip so that we could:

a) afford it

b) add our personal touches to the finishing details

c) have Cooper's grandparents nearby

So, that's the story. I can't WAIT to share the progress with you. Thank you to everyone who left positive comments on "seeing the potential" (although you were probably lying to make me feel better).

I should post some before/afters of our place - that would likely make for more interesting fodder on my blog than my haircut and various parenting dilemmas. I will stay tuned - I love this renovation/restoration/fix-up stuff!

Holy crazy story, Batman!!! So insane!!! I've never even heard of that "Kijijjiii" or whatever thing:) Its awesome that the flippers did the boring stuff like new windows and electrical - sweet! And to have the floors done already will make things so much easier, the stairs look a million times better! This is so exciting, guess it was meant to be. Can't wait to see more! Congratulations!

That is such fantastic news! Congrats again! But the changes are looking really good...hey at least you dont have to do as much work right! Keep us posted with pictures! We are all looking forward to see the progress!